‘Extremely bright and extraordinarily ... curious’: Records note McDaniel’s skills, ties to Bibb DA’s office, judges

One day last July while Macon police were building their murder case against Stephen McDaniel, a letter addressed to him from an office at the Bibb County Courthouse was mailed to his parents’ house.

In a newspaper interview published the same day, McDaniel’s mother told how her son, a recent Mercer University law graduate, had aspirations of becoming a prosecutor, a Supreme Court justice even.

At the time, McDaniel, then two months shy of his 26th birthday, was entering the third week of what has become a seven-month stay at the Bibb jail.

In the months before he was locked up, he had been job hunting. He applied for at least one. On April 15, 2011, McDaniel handed in his résumé and filled out 11 pages of prospective-employee paperwork at the county human resources office down the hill from his Georgia Avenue apartment.

He wanted to be a Bibb Superior Court law clerk. Landing such a position would have been considered a good job for someone fresh out of law school.

On July 15, a letter went out to “Mr. Stephen Mark McDaniel.” It was from the Mulberry Street courthouse. It was a reply to his application, sent from the very place where McDaniel would soon, on more than one occasion, be led, handcuffed and shackled, accused of killing, decapitating and dismembering Lauren Giddings, his 27-year-old neighbor and law school classmate.

“Your application and documents for the position of Law Clerk with the Bibb County Superior Court have been reviewed by the Superior Court Judges,” the letter began. “They have selected another candidate.”

* * *

McDaniel’s application, complete with his employment history, job references, letters of recommendation and college transcripts, were obtained in a recent open-records request by The Telegraph.

The documents, 24 pages in all, shed light on some of the connections -- peripheral as they may be -- that McDaniel has to the inner circles of the local legal system that could send him to death row.

In 2010, in the spring semester of his second year at law school, he was an unpaid clerk for Superior Court Judge Edgar Ennis. The judge has recused himself from presiding over the capital murder case against McDaniel, whose scheduled Tuesday arraignment was postponed last week. No new date has been set.

In his 2011 spring semester, McDaniel was an unpaid clerk for the Bibb District Attorney’s Office. But the meticulous McDaniel, whose handwriting is so precise and carefully crafted that it almost looks computer-generated, erred on the dates. He listed the wrong year, mistakenly citing his time there as lasting from February through May 2010.

McDaniel noted in his job-history form that his duties at the District Attorney’s office included “Case preparation, Witness interviews, Appellate court analysis, Writing case summary memoranda, Drafting accusations, Gathering case materials.”

He graduated the month the clerkship ended last May.

The only other employment McDaniel mentioned on the job-history sheet was summer work with his house-painter father. For 10 years, from 1997 until 2007, McDaniel wrote that his responsibilities as a painter included “Task assessment, Speaking with employers, Independent work completion.”

He listed a starting salary of “$0” and an ending salary of “$10 per hour.”

* * *

McDaniel’s résumé cites his 3.2 grade-point average from his undergraduate studies at Mercer.

An honor graduate from Parkview High in Gwinnett County, he had enrolled at Mercer in August 2004 after winning an academic scholarship.

He graduated in December 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. McDaniel’s major was in a course of study called “Managed Academic Path to Success.”

He started law school in fall 2008. Halfway through his final semester last spring, he had a low-B average.

On his résumé, McDaniel wrote that he was “skilled at multi-tasking,” “adept at quickly learning new tasks,” and that he was a “persuasive writer and speaker ... capable of working independently or alongside others.”

Floyd Buford, McDaniel’s attorney, said Monday that his defense team has interviewed more than 30 people about his client. “The general consensus,” Buford said, “was that he was very bright.”

McDaniel’s résumé also notes a couple of other gigs, including a job in the fall of 2007 as a promotions-and-marketing assistant for Mercer Athletics, where he “planned and executed promotions at sporting events.”

In summers, from 2002 until 2004, McDaniel said he was a stage manager and director’s assistant for a drama camp in Lilburn, his hometown.

McDaniel’s résumé lists three references: his father; Ennis, the judge; and Mercer law professor Jack Sammons.

Sammons was one of two law professors who supplied letters of recommendation for McDaniel.

The other professor, Patrick Longan, wrote that McDaniel “is extremely bright and extraordinarily intellectually curious. Mr. McDaniel also has a marvelous even-keeled temperament.”

Asked about his recommending McDaniel, Longan said Monday, “That’s really a subject I don’t want to comment on.”

Sammons, in his letter, described McDaniel as “a careful researcher, a diligent and trustworthy worker.”

“Stephen,” Sammons wrote, “is attentive to detail. ... He is efficient and focused and yet creative and insightful -- a lovely rare combination of virtues. Stephen is also extraordinarily pleasant, very relaxed in his manner, and very thoughtful of others.”

Sammons closed his letter saying how pleased he was to have had even a partial role in what, for McDaniel, would no doubt be “a terrific legal career.”

Asked Monday if his perceptions of McDaniel had changed, Sammons said, “Let’s just say that what I said in the letter were my perceptions of Stephen at the time that I wrote the letter. Everything that I said in the letter was an honest assessment of what I saw, his potential as an attorney.”

At the Walter F. George School of Law, according to paperwork McDaniel submitted for the Superior Court clerkship, McDaniel was one of 131 students in his class.

Four months before he graduated, he ranked 111th.

To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398. To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.

This story was originally published February 7, 2012 at 12:00 AM with the headline "‘Extremely bright and extraordinarily ... curious’: Records note McDaniel’s skills, ties to Bibb DA’s office, judges."